SC Johnson to List All Fragrance Ingredients for Cleaning, Air Care Products

Posted: March 13, 2009

SC Johnson has announced that it will now list all ingredients for home care and air care products, including fragrances. "Fragrances will be shared by listing all ingredients that could potentially be included in the fragrance," noted a company statement. "This approach helps protect the proprietary details of the specific formulation of individual fragrances, which are a trade secret and competitive advantage for SC Johnson and its supply chain."

The program, which will roll out through 2012, will make ingredient information available on a Web site, toll-free number and product labels.

Of the move, SC Johnson chairman and CEO Fisk Johnson said, "Making information about the ingredients in our products readily accessible and easy to understand helps our consumers know they can continue to trust our products."

Part of the company's "trust" strategy is the gradual phase-out, begun in 2008, of diethyl phthalate (DEP). "The particular phthalate that raised concern, DEP, has been extensively researched and has been deemed safe by various scientific bodies. But the larger class of substances in the phthalate family has been more hotly debated, and we understand that sometimes whole categories of substances can erroneously be seen as concerning despite individual items being safe. So even though the chemistry was sound, we decided that making sure consumers know they can trust SC Johnson products was well worth the time and cost to change them."